As per IIBA, Business Analysis is the practice of enabling change in an organizational context, by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.

One should not restrict the BA role to only being a link between Non-It and IT or only for development projects. A BA is someone who is able to bring in improvements, changes (technology, process, people etc.) in an efficient manner. So a BA could be part of the marketing team who helps the marketing team in providing estimates/high level solutions for a said project which is under the process of procurement. Or he could be someone involved during the Requirement gathering/analysis once the project is initiated. Or he could be someone who brings profit to the company by performing process improvementactivities ROIs at process level.
Last but not the least BAs could be domain specific as well.

2.How would you transform business requirements to functional requirements?

While preparing Business requirements documents you mention why you need to built a system, i.e. problem statement. What you need to do while creating functional requirements is you have to specify is, solution of the problem. Specify thoroughly business problem and explain solution for the same.

Business requirement documents do not necessarily contain solution part, functional requirement may contain it how end user wants the system to perform. Don’t forget to add non-functional requirements same doc.

Following is the instance of Business Requirement, Functional Requirement and Non-Functional Requirement.

Business Requirement

Functional requirement

Non-Functional Requirement

Sales order is made against customers purchase order. Sales order is given for approval to upper authority

Sales order shall be made with reference from Purchase order and it should be approved from upper authority.

Sales order should be in proper format (Specify format) and six copies of sales order should be printed from printer in 1 minute.

3. How do you resolve issues?

I would rather focus on issues and the facts related. Origin of issue, severity of the issue, implications and possible solutions to solve the issue. Try not to focus on the person who brought up the issue.

4.Mention some of the tools commonly used by business analyst?

There might be various tools that you as a business analyst would be using depending upon the work environment.
The primary tools are:
MS-Office (Especially Word)
MS-Visio (for visualizing the concepts, creating diagrams)

But a lot of bigger organizations have been using Rational Software. Rational software licensing is expensive so you might not find it being used everywhere.
Rational Requisite Pro (for Requirement Management)
Rational ClearCase/ClearQuest (For change management)

I have also found that some places like using MS-SharePoint, telelogic DOORS and other tools for document collaboration. I would say, keep a working knowledge of MS SharePoint, at least.

Sometimes you might end up being a BA com QA. As such, it is nice to have a working knowledge of creating Test cases, using Load Runner, QTP etc.

Except for these tools if you have knowledge of RDBMS, Oracle, SQL, different operating systems, some OOP, it is always a plus.

5.Explain equivalence class?

Equivalence class a mathematical concept is a subset of given set induced by an equivalence relation on that given set. (If the given set is empty then the equivalence relation is empty and there are no equivalence classes; otherwise the equivalence relation and its concomitant equivalence classes are all non-empty.) Elements of an equivalence class are said to be equivalent under the equivalence relation to all the other elements of the same equivalence class. For each equivalence relation there is a collection of equivalence classes. Any two different equivalence classes are disjoint and the union over all of the equivalence classes is the given set. Equivalence classes and their corresponding equivalence relation are defined in set theory a vital foundation for mathematics and those fields that use mathematics. More details can be found in a study of equivalence relation.

6.What is the difference between data model and an entity relationship diagram?

A data model is a model which shows how data is stored and used for e.g. a normal database It has 3 main parts 1)Structural part:- how data is structured 2)Integrity part:- Rules governing structure3)Manipulation part:- operators used to select, update, query that data, e.g. select, update, delete commands in SQL. To further add Data Modeling is when we add this theory to Live instance. ENTERPRISE DATA MODEL (ENTERPRISE RELATIONSHIP MODELING):- This can be called as an conceptual model or semantic model The sub parts of an ERM are 1) Entity:- It is an object, e.g. employees, computer 2) Relationship:- It captures how two or more entities are related to each other 3)Attributes:- Every entity has its own sets of attributes (e.g. PAN no in India for each employee or SSN in US). To clarify the points look at example: An employee is an entity belonging to entity sets (All employees) which has a relationship with department, and attributes is emp code

Requirement session is usually done through JAD session. Business Folks and Major sponsors are always there along with some technical folks. Business analyst then goes through each requirement and asks for the feedback. If Business Sponsors and Technical Folks think that all the requirements are according to the business and won’t be a barrier to existing system. They get the official signoff on Business Requirement document. IT manager and Business manager both do the sign off on that business requirement document.

9. Mention the difference between business process improvement and business process reengineering?

Business process improvement implies changing a step sub step or any part of the process i.e. process is not completely changed In BPR we actually study the business and find out what is the best way I can carry out the process and change the whole way the process runs(business process redesign)

10. What is UML?

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a standard language for specifying, visualizing, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of software systems, as well as for business modeling and other non-software systems. The UML represents a collection of best engineering practices that have proven successful in the modeling of large and complex systems

Functional Requirements are documented in the SRS document / Use Case Document. Non Functional requirements are listed in the SRS document.

12. What is the relationship between use case and test case?

A use case is written from a “user” perspective describing the interaction of a piece of software between the user and the software. These are written in common language typically from the business or user point of view and in enough detail for the developer to create a piece of software. Typically written in a MS Word type tool. Use cases capture the functional requirements of the system. It describes the expected interaction the user will experience, in detail. The audience is the business, for signoff, and technology for development.

A Test Case is written using the use cases for a source. It takes a use case to a deeper level so that software testers can exercise every possible scenario that could occur, negative and positive scenarios. One Use Case can turn into 10 test cases. 10 test cases make up a test script. Typically Test Cases will be written in a testing tool like Test Director, but also can be written in MS Word. The audience is QA testers.